The Kittila mine is situated within the Kittila Greenstone belt, part of the Lapland Greenstone belt in the Proterozoic-age Svecofennian geologic province. The appearance and geology of the area is similar to that of the Abitibi region of the Canadian Shield. In northern Finland, the bedrock is typically covered by a thin but uniform blanket of unconsolidated glacial till. Bedrock exposures are scarce and irregularly distributed.

The mine area is underlain by mafic volcanic and sedimentary rocks metamorphosed to greenschist assemblages and assigned to the Kittila group. The major rock units trend north to north-northeast and are near-vertical. The volcanics are further sub-divided into iron-rich tholeiitic basalts located to the west and magnesium-rich tholeiitic basalt, coarse volcaniclastic units, graphitic schist and minor chemical sedimentary rocks located to the east. The contact between these two rock units consists of a transitional zone (the "Porkonen Formation") varying between 50 and 200 metres in thickness. This zone is strongly sheared, brecciated and characterized by intense hydrothermal alteration and gold mineralization, features consistent with major brittle-ductile deformation zones. The zone is part of a major north-northeast-oriented shear zone (the "Suurikuusikko Trend").

The Porkonen Formation hosts the Kittila gold deposit, which contains multiple mineralized zones stretching over a strike length of more than 25 kilometres. Most of ........

Mining at Kittila started initially using the open pit mining method. Open pit mining ended in November 2012 and all mining is currently carried out underground via ramp access.

At the Kittila mine, the Suurikuusikko, the Rouravaara and the Rimpi orebodies are currently mined by underground mining methods accessed via ramp. Approximately 5,000 to 5,500 tonnes of ore per day are fed to the processing plant. The underground mining method is open stoping with delayed backfill. Stopes are between 25 and 40 metres high and yield between 8,000 and 40,000 tonnes of ore per stope. To ensure sufficient ore production is available in the future to supply the mill, 15,000 to 17,000 metres of tunnels will be developed each year. After extraction, stopes are filled with paste backfill or cemented backfill to enable the safe extraction of ore in adjacent stopes. Ore is trucked to the surface crusher via the ramp access system.

In February 2018, the Board approved an expansion to increase throughput rates at Kittila to 2.0 million tonnes per annum (“mtpa”) from the current rate of 1.6 mtpa. This expansion includes the construction of a 1,044-metre deep shaft, a processing plant expansion as well as other infrastructure and service upgrades.

The expansion project is expected to increase the efficiency of the mine and maintain or decrease operating costs while providing access to the deeper mining horizons. In addition, the shaft is expected to provide acces ........

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